


the girl is a weapon

by evanlinge



Category: Naruto
Genre: Blink-and-you-miss-it References to Shakespeare, aka: the usual suspects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:27:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26782117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanlinge/pseuds/evanlinge
Summary: or: there is no room for love between them. only the aching shadow of compatibility
Relationships: Namikaze Minato & Uzumaki Kushina
Kudos: 5





	the girl is a weapon

When Kushina is young, she feels as though she’s chained a part of herself down with the Kyūbi. Taken out parts of herself and turned them into shackles to bind them both. It’s one of many things she never talks about.

Here is another: Kushina doesn’t like to compare herself to Namikaze but of course, it’s inevitable. Everyone does and – she hates him. She _hates_ him. He’s everything she wants and everything that she’s never going to be.

(The key difference between them is that he never goes down and she never stays down. She doesn’t like to look him in the face because she’ll see whatever strange thing is dead behind his eyes and – she’ll lose her temper and open the floodgates of hot, red, rage she keeps locked inside her. She’ll throw the first punch and he’ll take to his heels and all her hard-earned fury will have been wasted on Namikaze’s too-pretty face. It’s not worth it. It’s never worth it.)

They ask her for her name when she comes to Konoha. Uzumaki _Kushina_ , she says. She wants to scream it right into the Hokage’s wrinkled face. She’s a sacrifice, she knows this. They’ve been telling her so since the day she received Mito-sama’s summons. Since the day she stepped foot across the border to Fire Country and heard that all her friends were dead.

Here is the truth: The girl is a jinchūriki. She is brimming from the crown to the toe top-full of power and still, she owns nothing, not even herself, in the eyes of Konoha.

Here is the truth: The girl is a weapon. She’s beautiful. She knows this, because all sorts of idiots are always telling her so. Pawing at her hair, her hips, crowding sloppily against her flat chest and pert nipples. They would turn and run if they knew what lay behind her breastbone. It’s not the Kyūbi that they should be afraid of. Her danger is all her own. She’s come by it honestly.

Her hands are soft, callouses healing over before they can form properly – torn up palms smoothing over into pink unblemished skin by the time she gets home from training. They look like civilian hands, Inochi says, only half-mocking. On her last mission Kushina tore open a man’s ribcage with three broken fingers. She spent hours scrubbing bits of tissue and bone out from under her nails. She doesn’t have a bruise to show for it.

* * *

In Kushina’s dreams she’s digging at the base of a giant tree, scraping out great chunks of soggy earth, nails snagging on the roots. All at once it seems the dirt gives way into a chasm that gapes beneath her, as wide as Uzushiogakure’s guardian whirlpools and as deep as the universe itself, full of stars withering away into nothingness. She watches for a long time, all those little bright spots collapsing in on themselves behind her eyelids.

* * *

(Kushina makes her rage a weapon and buries it. Chokes down the part of herself that wants to kill everyone she’s ever seen, in the Intake Office, in the Academy, in the rocky forests of Kumo where Namikaze says, “Let me take you home,”. She doesn’t quite know when the anger took root in her – grew strong and twisted into something too big to contain in her chest, but it’s _good._ It’s familiar. She knows then that the Kyūbi is not the only one whose hate could burn worlds. There’s a thread there, a hint of a connection that could blossom if she chose to pursue it. She won’t. The Kyūbi is yet another anchor dragging her down, just like Namikaze. He has a sweet smile when he looks at her – just a barely-there tilt of his lush red mouth. Kushina wants to split it open with her teeth.)

There will never be any tenderness between her and Namikaze – they've both already been overrun with things neither of them can name. There's no room left inside Kushina, all the space has already been filled. As for Namikaze, she doesn't know what's sleeping under his skin, but she suspects it's no less monstrous than what's under hers. All they have is the aching shadow of compatibility. It's enough.

(She doesn’t know why she falls in love with him. Or even how it happens really – it’s like he’s always been there and one day she turns around and he’s smiling in her peripheral vision with dead eyes and a mouth full of hidden blood and death and _rage_ and – she can relate.)


End file.
